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OLTL: RIP Thom Christopher (ex-Carlo Hesser)


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Another stunning loss for the daytime community.  Thom Christopher and Carlo Hesser were both one-of-a-kind.  My condolences to everyone who knew him.

(Man, this is turning out to be a real shitty year for soaps fans.)

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Oh goddamnit. I am tired of this.

What to say? Thom is another one of the greats. I was just watching him again as I explored the fall transition at OLTL in 1991. He could do just about anything with verve, style, menace or yes, comedy.

He's also immortalized not just in soaps but in his several appearances in classic MST3K episodes over the course of 30+ years. I was pleased when he turned up there again for the first time since the '90s in a favored episode of the new Netflix seasons.

I always wanted one more good Carlo Hesser story on OLTL to finish him off, something with Fiona Hutchison that was more distinguished than the silly caper they left him with. But Carlo never really dies.

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A week or two ago I was trying to remember if he'd already passed.

Thom was one of the most purely charismatic performers I've ever seen. This meant that he often powered writing which wasn't there on all of his soaps. Even on Loving, tormenting poor Chris Marcantel while wearing a dyed wig he stole from Sylvester and Tweety's owner. Even on GL, where they finally had to make him a baddie to justify writing him out but you still sympathized with him. And in his many poorly scripted moments as Carlo and Mortimer. Even throwing the most transparent "we're in the '90s now, please stop turning us off while we're turning you on," S&M moments with Alex, Thom and Tonja Walker steamed it up and made all the nonsense worth watching.

Nice to see he and the actor who played Johnny Dee kept in touch. I hadn't thought of Anthony Crivello in a long time - glad he's doing OK.

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This. The next few years are going to have quite a few sad losses, especially for us late Gen Xers/early Millennials who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Still it never gets easier.

TC was around as Carlo when I started watching OLTL, and I knew he was a special talent. He enlivened a lot of bad stories, as DRW50 mentioned.

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Thanks for the clip. The thumbnail does a great deal of the work.

Thom did his best with that awful story...it speaks volumes of where "Cartini" were as talent at that point that Carlo was obsessed with Talla here and then when she was killed months later, we, IIRC, didn't hear a peep about him.

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